I am not an agnostic. In recent times the term has been misused. As Adrian Hayter was quick to point out, agnostic does not mean undecided about god, it does not mean you could swing either way on the matter.
The term agnostic was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley to describe his position with regards to absolute knowledge. The term itself, agnostic, contrasts with the ancient greek gnostikós, or “knowing”, and presumably with the gnostic religious tradition that existed in the early centuries of the common era. What Huxley was trying to get at in describing his beliefs as “agnostic” was a position concerning certainty in knowledge.
Agnosticism is a position of scepticism, without the certainty of either absolute atheism or absolute religious belief. Adrian Hayter (wrote a blog post about this, and he was quick to link me to it when I mentioned I might be writing on this topic.
He rightly argues that God is not something we are simply undecided about. All people who have ever thought about it probably have an inclination in one direction or another. Some are just more certain (gnostic in Adrian’s words) than others.
Adrian offers the following dichotomy:
There are 4 main positions on belief in God:
Agnostic Gnostic Atheist Agnostic Atheist - Does not believe in God, but recognises that God is an unknowable being. Gnostic Atheist - Does not believe in God, and thinks that this belief is the ultimate truth (knowledge). Theist Agnostic Theist - Believes in God, but recognises that God is an unknowable being. Gnostic Theist - Believes in God, and thinks that this belief is the ultimate truth (knowledge). Both agnostic positions are rational, whilst the gnostic are irrational. Claiming absolute knowledge of a God is ridiculous, since neither way can be irrefutably proved.
Obviously I disagree with Adrian’s conclusion, I am an atheist and I am not an agnostic. And I do not think this is an irrational proposition.
I argue as follows:
1. We can identify the origins of god.
God is a human creation. God is the product of our attempts to explain things that at various times in our history have appeared inexplicable. Yet we have an urge to attach a cause to all things we observe, we can correctly identify this as a biproduct of the evolution of the human mind.
2. We can trace the history of god.
The development of god in animism, it’s progression towards polytheism and greater ritual, and the eventual emergence of monotheism.
3. We can understand how and why god is reproduced in the human mind.
The development of powerful institutions, the comfort of belief, the transmission of popular ideas between people. These are all things we can know.
4. We can satisfactorily explain all of this, all the observable manifestations of god in the human mind and in human society, without recourse to the notion that god actually exists.
But of course the agnostic atheist might say, yes, I accept all of this, but it’s possible that god might still exist anyway.
Well, no. Let’s use the common sense definition of god here. God the creator, all seeing and all powerful. God in a universe in which humans have immortal spirits that god judges over.
This god defies any logical conception of reality. This isn’t the place to make a comprehensive case against this notion of god, needless to say that it is internally contradictory, as any agnostic atheist well knows.
But of course this is only the common sense definition of god. And here we come to the problem I have with agnosticism.
As science has advanced into the territory once occupied by religious explanation, religious apologists have increasingly redefined god out of the reach of science. Agnostics can reject god in the traditional sense, as Huxley certainly did when he championed evolution as “Darwin’s Bulldog”. But ultimately agnostics continue to claim that ultimately god is unknowable, no matter how the definition of god progresses in order to avoid the touch of science.
Eventually, the god that agnostics are being agnostic about, is no god at all.
But what of the gnostics, those of us who Adrian criticises for our certainty?
Adrian argues that a “gnostic atheist” sees a disbelief in the existence of god as the “ultimate truth” and is thus irrational. I disagree, I do not see any of this as the ultimate truth. The history of an idea is just that, the history of an idea. The fact the idea is not grounded in reality, does not answer all my questions about reality. It is thus not the ultimate truth.
Adrian claims both the agnostic theist and the agnostic theist are rational, because they do not claim absolute knowledge. But I disagree, agnosticism is a claim about the absolute unknowability of the validity of certain types of ideas. To this non-agnostic atheist, that seems a tad irrational.
Irreverently yours, Kieran.
This is the second post in my New Assignment series. Yeah, it’s like two weeks late.
Update: Adrian has posted an interesting response.
However, I do not think that any of these gods are gods that the agnostic atheist would claim are unknowable.
To which I would say, these gods (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc) are for all intents and purposes the topic in the God debate. And I am not agnostic about them. Adrian argues that there is another god, the potential “mystical element” in that which we currently don’t understand about the totality of creation, and it is this he is agnostic (ie. deems unknowable) about.
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on May 28th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
It does come down to the point of determining what is meant by god doesn’t it.
on May 28th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Hehe, nice article Kieran. Gnostic atheists and agnostics atheists have always been arguing who is the more rational. As Sean pointed out, it comes down to how you define “God”. The agnostic atheist understands that there are many forms of God, and they are all completely made up by humanity (Allah, Yahweh, etc). However, the agnostic atheist is only agnostic about one God. This “God” is the power that started everything in the universe off, and which science has yet to come up with a rational reason for.
In the case of the beginning of the universe, it is very irrational to just suppose that everything came into existence without reason. Until that reason is found, there is nothing wrong with calling this power a “God”.
What I mean when I say that gnostic atheists are irrational is the point that they cannot explain exactly how the universe came into being. By allowing the title of “agnostic” you are open to multiple possibilities, rather than just cling to the hope that nothing mystical happened.
on May 28th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
This “god” is, for all intents and purposes, not god. But even so, it’s as much a demonstrably human concept. Knowing the propisition from start to finish for what it is, an idea produced not because of it’s observable reality but because of it’s convenience for certain human minds, we can rationally dismiss it. We do not have to accept it as an unknowable possibility.
Speaking of which, the unknowable seems only to exist in a certain point in time. It has steadily receded in the face of human observation, curiosity and science, and will continue to do so.
To put a concise spin on my argument, we know what god is, where it has come from, how it has changed, and how it has been reproduced. God is thus not unknowable, and thus I am not agnostic about god.
There is not a god that has not been made up by humanity!
on May 28th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Hi Kieran,
Just found your blog, looks interesting. I am sure to return. I think I disagree with much of what you say but I am impressed by your attempt to deconstruct illusion.
My challenge on this comment is to suggest that what appears to you as a consciouness free of illusion is really just a different fabric of illusion. You may have transcended theistic illusion to find yourself in an equally mythical understanding. This is not pointing the finger at you, it is the human condition.
Science is as illusory as religion. Science is the process of testing hypothesis, theory and law. Many things that we think we know as fact is really just a hypothesis or a theory that, like god, cannot be challenged due to lack of contrary information. Like god, the theories are established as fact by way of institutional endorsement, not knowledge of reality.
The big bang theory makes no more sense than creationism. What existed before the bang? it cant be answered any more than how big is the universe and what is on the other side of it?. Flat Earth and the sun revolving around the earth were accepted as scientific fact, until further evidence was aquired. “Scientific fact” is perpetually changing as new information is gathered - it is a transitional myth, not objective reality.
The debate between atheism, agnosticism and theism (by whatever definitions) is a debate amongst different elements of a unifying culture and consciousness, for brevity I will describe it as “western consciousness” (but other cultures similarly have spectrums of philosophical disagreement within other frameworks).
Halucinogenic drug experience enables us to realise that which we percieve as reality is also just a “trip”. The trip and sobriety are two seperate manifestations of the same “truth” or “reality”, neither consciousness more accurate than the other. While the trip may appear of a greater magnitude of experience than normal sobriety, but that is just because we have become used to sobriety, in a Pavlovian sense. It appears as truth because we have no experience of anything else - until the trip, the intense meditation, near death experience, schitzophrenia, or indigenous initiation ritual - all of which deconstruct not just notions of “god” but of every other single notion that our minds harbor.
(I gotta say….The problem with halucinogenic stuff is some people believe the experience of the trip as a superior existence. In this case, I say, they have just adopted a different illusion rather than learning the nature of illusion and deconstructing it).
Now this is where gnosticism comes into it. I consider myself a gnostic. The word gnosticism is problematic because of semantic intepretation, and I disagree with the definition above which may be as correct as any other but it does not explain my knowledge (gnosis).
Gnosticism is as much about knowing a leaf as it is knowing god. It is the consciousness by which illusions such as god, work, family, language are systematically purged from our mind until there is nothing left - no illusion or “thought” whatsoever. Knowledge, awareness, of this nothingness is the deconstruction of illusion. Illusion is percieved and understood through this knowlege of nothingness (everything elseness). From the perspective of the dissolution of illusion, we can truly understand a leaf (or the infinity of the cosmos and the eternity of time, often reduced to a concept of god). Given that the primary vessel of illusion is ego - a matrix of thought and prior experience that we think is our ultimate self. But it is not! Ego itself is just thought, an illusion. With this knowledge (a different concept to understanding) we do not egoicly observe the leaf (or cosmos) as a seperate and detatched thing, we understand the inherent connection with the leaf, the point at which the leaf being observed and the entity observing it are in fact one and the same thing. The priciples of sub atomic physics and ecology provide “unserstandings” of the connectedness, but knowledge (gnosis) of the connectedness is a matter of consciousness, not information. The new born baby, devoid of information has a knowledge of their inherent connection to everything else. Detatchment and individual ego-isation is a process of imposing illusion onto that original consciousness, smothering it as a sense of self based on historical thought develops.
Krishnamerti says “Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.”
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/core.htm
Anyway, that’s kinda what I reckon.
on May 29th, 2008 at 4:12 am
The idea that agnosticism posits the possibility of a god is not credible because it 1. assumes there is a common definition of god, 2. if there is a god, then it is just as likely that there is a non-god, 3. science has shown that the evidence for this position is not 50/50 but militates against the god idea,
4. the assumption that god exists is a pollution of the argument about the existence of god, 5. the notion of god is a man-made construct that defies the “unknowable” argument, 6. the personification of god has a psychological implication in that there is a need for a father figure that takes care of everything, 7. myths abound in society and are used for educational purposes but they are still myths. Religion is one.
on May 29th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Science is not illusory. To prove the point, jump off of a skyscraper and live. It is verifiable in reality.
An acid trip is not reality and that is verifiable. It was verified by the Swiss doctor who created it for the purpose of simulating schizophrenia.
The metaphysical notion that our perception of reality is an illusion is a non-verifiable (by science) postulate and though it might make a kind of logical sense on paper, doesn’t work in the real world.
There is confusion about the word “hypothesis”. Some are verifiable through the scientific process and some are not. What is illusory is that there is some fixed notion of the way things are for all time and this is what we get from so many theologians and philosophers who really don’t understand that the scientific method is always adapting to new information and is not fixed.
Krishnamurti talks about absolutes such as positive and negative as if one can’t contain elements of the other. The notion of absolute love is a romantic notion by metaphysical types whereas relative love is not within their purview. Gurus in general talk in generalities
which allow for no testing of their hypotheses. The new-born baby doesn’t necessarily connect to his/her environment because the information is not yet formed as it will become later.
Anything that emanates from the human brain can be categorized as illusion such as the notion of “ego”. The only way to determine its validity is to test it through the scientific method which may not give conclusive ultimate answers but useful partial ones.
on May 29th, 2008 at 10:39 am
“Science is not illusory. To prove the point, jump off of a skyscraper and live. It is verifiable in reality.”
Yet people have jumped out of planes, their parachutes failed, and they have survived. Of course, science can explain all of these events. I’m not arguing against science, merely your example.
I also have to disagree with your definition of agnosticism. It doesn’t posit the possibility of god, it says god is unknowable. Essentially, we will never know so there is no point even trying to disprove / prove it.
on May 29th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Hi Frank,
An acid trip is indeed not reality, as I believe I stated in my disclaimer about people who believe their trips. The point I am making is that “normal” consciousness also is not reality, just perceived as such as is the trip.
You say…”What is illusory is that there is some fixed notion of the way things are for all time”
is this not exactly what you say of science? The specifics of science change, as does theology. But faith in the process is the same.
You also say…. “There is confusion about the word “hypothesisâ€. Some are verifiable through the scientific process and some are not”.
I must challenge this as I see no confusion at all in the meaning of hypothisis. If a hypothisis has any circumstatial supporting evidence whatsoever it is no longer a hypothesis but a theory according to scientific process. Once a theory cannot be disproved ( a different concept to proving) by the frontline of global science then it is considered a law, or at least it was until sub-atomic and quantum physics came into the equation and now it seems that all “laws” are subjected to a new over-riding law that there are always exceptions.
Also
I believe you may have mistaken krishnamertis notions of negation and positive to be the same as the christian notion of good and evil. It is not.
Krishnamerti was anti-Guru, although ironically there is no doubt he was one and misused as such. I am no disciple, I have only just recently discovered him while websurfing but he has articulated many things that I feel but have not yet been able to articulate so I find him usefull. I am still trying to get my head around some of his stuff that I have not considered too so I find him challenging. It is his dismissal of guru-ism that I find most attractive. The guru or “path” mode that usually accompanies transcendent philosophy movements is an inherent contradiction in those movements. Not so, it would seem with Mr. K.
He said….
“If someone has helped you and you make of him your authority, then are you not preventing all further help, not only from him, but from everything about you? Does not help lie about you everywhere? Why look in only one direction? And when you are so enclosed so bound, can any help reach you? But when you are open, there is unending help in all things, from the song of a bird to the call of a human being, from the blade of grass to the immensity of the heavens. The poison and corruption begin when you look to one person as your authority, your guide, your saviour.”
As for new born babies and romantic love. Have you ever seen a child born? What information tells it to suck its mothers tit? They are certainly bonded through 9 months of being the same biological organism. The love a baby has for its mother is the same love it has for itself as it has not yet been taught the difference between the baby and the mother. Also, it does not know the difference between the baby/mother organism from the concept of “everything” that emerges with the foetus’s intellectual growth. This connection has nothing to do with romantic love but is the basic human consciousness before socialisation, before and transcendent from the various constructed notions of love we use to describe identity anxieties.
on Jun 9th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
God exists only in the mind of believers.
Philosophically speaking, the statement “God exists” is meaningless. Where does God exist? If He exists and if we can know Him, He would cease to be God.
on Jun 19th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Hey Kieran, thanks for answering my question.
To the question of the “mystical element” which is unknowable I suppose my attitude is “OK, but so what?” Believers are not required to have specifically ruled out random unknowable things before they call themselves Christians. It seems to me that placing this unreachable standard on a word is unreasonable. I tend to think “I am not utterly omnipotent” is an unspoken footnote to everything I say!
And there is the practical issue that no religion in the world worships “something out there” without defining any attributes of that “something.” (although I suppose some new agey “life force” concepts come close) They all make specific claims and it is those claims a person can investigate and if you are unconvinced by the evidence for the claims you can call youself an Atheist, or agnostic if you prefer to avoid the arguments.
on Jun 21st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Absolutely! You hit the nail on the head, religion and god are specific claims that we can and should investigate, and when the evidence doesn’t stack up, we should reject them!
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